Career Growth Advice from Susan Sly, AI Entrepreneur & Founder of PAI | Reinventing Women’s Health and Menopause Support with AI

2B Bolder Podcast – Episode 130
Featuring Susan Sly

Episode Title: #130 Susan Sly Talks about Revolutionizing Menopause Support with AI & Her Career Journey

Host: Mary Killelea
Guest: Susan Sly


Mary Killelea (Host): Hi there, my name is Mary Killelea. Welcome to the 2B Bolder podcast, providing career insights for the next generation of women in business and tech. 2B Bolder was created out of my love for technology and marketing, my desire to bring together like-minded women, and my hope to be a great role model and source of inspiration for my two girls and other young women like you. Encouraging you guys to show up and to be bolder and to know that anything you guys dream of, it's totally possible. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation.

Hey there. Today's show is for all women. Menopause is finally getting the attention it deserves, and it's about time. Millions of women go through it, yet the solutions and support have lagged behind until now. Today's guest is on a mission to change that. Susan Sly is a powerhouse entrepreneur and tech visionary who's using the power of AI to reshape how women experience menopause. She's the founder and CEO of PAI, a groundbreaking platform that's bringing personalized real-time support to the space that's been ignored far too long. And this isn't her first bout with technology and solving problems. Before launching Paw AI, she co-founded Radius AI, an award-winning company in the visual intelligence space. Susan's passion for solving problems that matter to women using cutting edge technology to lead with purpose makes her the standout leader in AI. And I'm so honored to have you here joining us today. Thank you so much.

Susan Sly (Guest): Well, thanks Mary. And to all of our listeners, I think you know, first and foremost, I want to acknowledge you. I mean, as a podcast host myself, I always start my day with a podcast and I just commend all of your listeners and everyone here because I know we're going to have a great conversation.

Mary Killelea: Fantastic. Okay, so let's start with your origin story. What's your background? Let's start there since you're obviously in the tech space now and you've had an interesting background, eclectic. So, tell everyone about it.

Susan Sly: Yeah, sure. I you know I've been on the bleeding edge of artificial intelligence since 2018 but I haven't written a line of code since 1992 and part of I think that the the big piece for women to understand is we are going to have anywhere from 7 to 9 I think is the latest statistic Mary career iterations and for me I was when I was in university I was working on early facial recognition algorithms in from 1991 - 92 and then I really wanted to be Jodie Foster from Silence the Lambs and I thought I would use this technology to go catch criminals and you know that that would be it. But I went into that world of federal law enforcement right out of college and realized very quickly that to be candid conducive to rehabilitation. what especially for serious offenders what the modalities being used then and nothing has changed in 30 years really only supported recidivism and by that I mean like you know offenders would go into the prison and they'd have a drug problem and they'd have a worse drug problem and so the I became very easily jaded in my early 20s with that and I decided to pursue a passion in the holistic side of health and I went into the sales and marketing side of the house and and built sales teams that generated over two billion in sales. But in 2016, I've had many near-death experiences, but in 2016, I've been to Africa many times. I've been to Cambodia. I've gone undercover, rescued girls from sex trafficking. Wow. I went to Africa, but this time I came back very sick. And I was misdiagnosed and I was gaslit by several physicians. One told me it was all in my head and gave me a personal development book and I said listen I do speaking events with people like Tony Robbins and I've written seven books so no it's not all in my head swipe left and then another doctor said it was just PMS and it wasn't and I had an amoeba Mary and it was shutting down my organs and I was dying and so inhale Mary a friend of mine said there's a doctor who specializes in tropical diseases in New Boric and he's in his 80s and I flew to see him and he had worked in over 30 UN camps for doctors without borders diagnosed me. I went on two years of antibiotics, holistic modalities and came out the other side and said, you know what, I was given a second chance at life. What do I want to do? And I wanted to go back into technology. And so I ended up co-founding a company with four guys and they were looking for someone with my skill set raising money sales and because I hadn't written code in so long I went back to school. I went to MIT Sloan and then last year I graduated from executive education in the engineering department. So there's a lot more to the story of being homeless. I'm sure you read about my background and you know turning things around but those are you know that's some of the career highlights.

Mary Killelea: That's fascinating. So life-changing. I mean, just working with the traffic, you know, rescuing young girls or women in trafficking. I can't even imagine what that does to you and how it shifts your perspective on life. But I guess in all that, you have an incredible drive. What drives you personally?

Susan Sly: It's a great question. You know as women especially in our age cohort and I did a post in our private Facebook group today for the company for all of the women. You know at this stage of the game we either have aging parents or we've lost parents but my father passed away last summer. We may still have kids at home. We are navigating our careers. One of my friends may have three months to live, which is heartbreaking. We might be going through separation, divorce, I mean the list goes on and on. And you know some days it takes more energy than others. And I think it's very different for women than it is for men. We have more cause and effect. I mean back in 200 I think nine I was doing a big television show in Australia and you know I you know women have more synapses between the left and right hemisphere of our brain and I was explaining to the host I'm like look my new book the have it all women had come out at that time and I'm like listen we you know we're thinking about so many things at one time I mean you know what is so and so going to wear to school what are we going to wear what is for lunch what is for dinner do we have enough groceries in the house do I need to go to the store do I need to go to the dry cleaner. The list goes on and on.

Susan Sly: And it's not to diminish how men's minds work, but the reality is, and there's new research even in terms of how different cultural groups navigate menopause and parmenopause, there's something called weathering. And what that is, it's years and years and years of stress, and it could be socioeconomic stress, it could be physical stress that literally begins to degrade ourselves. So by this time in our life there are days when you know you've had maybe you're you know on HRT and you've had a decent night's sleep and you're feeling amazing and you can you can be motivated and there's other days when it takes work. I was a professional athlete and a lot of my background is being able to self-motivate. Not every day that I went on that start line did I feel like yes I'm going to be a podium finisher today. So what motivates me right now and I think the the root of the question is you know what is my in French we say the what is my why my my why right now is there are soon to be 1.1 billion women in menopause in the world and we know McKenzie is doing a lot of research and some studies show up to 41% of women in this age cohort want to quit their jobs due to lack of support and these women are managers directors heads VPs G suite and so forth and we're not being supported and the number one period tracking app out there is actually created by two guys and kudos to them. They have had a tremendous run but who better to solve women's health than women and so what keeps me up at night, what gets me up in the morning is how are we going to solve this? How are we going to create precision recommendations? Because parmenopause and menopause are not one-size-fits-all. And we're seeing black women, Asian women, mixed women like myself, so many different groups are having different symptoms. No one is addressing that. And so that's what keeps me going. But some days, you know, candidly, it's easy and some days it's I I need a little more.

Mary Killelea: Yeah. It was funny because like you said, I'm in that demographic. So it was I was on some chat with some women, friends of mine, and they're all like, "Are you going to watch the Oprah show tonight?" You know, because it was talking about menopause. It was something that hadn't gone on prime time. So, of course, we all tune in and compare, but what I loved about it, honestly, was just bringing the conversation to the masses. So, talk to me about real time anal real time AI. I want to say real time analytics, but real time AI and then also about your business pause AI and what women can do and how they can use it.

Susan Sly: So there's an Intel origin story. So I'll start with that because it's going to frame why do this, right? So it's September of 2023 and there's an event that happens every year called women in AI and 32 women are invited and these are women who are from the top tech companies Intel and Nvidia, HPE, AMD and founders like myself. And what happens is you spend the morning for a couple hours talking about AI, have brunch, and then you go to a fashion show. So you drink mimosas and it's fantastic. And it's like if I'm in I've been two years in a row like if I'm invited, it's Mary it's an instant. Yes. So I had been going through menopause and it was getting more and more severe. Even to the point where I said I'm going to get my breast implants removed, which I did. I was desperate to do anything. I was on HRT. I was not feeling good and I'm co-CEO of a growing company and we have four offices with 100 employees globally and you know my days are long and I loved what I was doing but I kept thinking like why am I suffering? I have a background in holistic health. If you know what to do. I eat the right things. I do all of the right things. This is not right. And I kept on thinking how do we solve this? So, we're at the event and we're on the party bus to go to the Badgley Mischka fashion show and one of the girls says, "Susan, you know, can you solve this with AI?" Because we're not talking about AI. We're talking about how much sleep you get and do you have hot flashes? And so a few months after that, I decided to walk away from my previous company and step out with no salary, just my savings and start to build this company and start to bootstrap it and bring in investors. And that road is not easy. And for everyone listening, I would say, you know, we have to start as women which is the majority of this listening audience, we have to start as women supporting women led companies. Like as I said the leading period app is started by two guys not that you know great but women need to support women. So I said how do we do this in such a way where we do something different and because of my background last year I was voted one of the top women in the world in real time AI along with Mera Marty from open AI and a group of us by an independent party. I said how do we take real time? So what that means is Mary, if you are not sleeping, how do you get support at 2 in the morning? Not like I'm going to talk to my menopause coach the next day or I'm going to talk to someone. What do you do if your heart rate is weird or something's going on and you're not feeling good? How do you get a recommendation in real time that says, "Hey, this isn't a day to go for a run. This is a day like, you know, you need to maybe go for an easy walk. Here's a meditation. and do a breathing exercise because that platform is taking the input that you're giving it and making a recommendation based on that. To build it is insanely challenging and most people would look at it and go, "Oh, that's a fun problem to solve, but it's a very difficult one to solve."

Susan Sly: So, that's how the company started and that's what we're aiming to build. And we also, this is so critical, Mary, say, you know, a woman has never had children and she ends up having a surgical menopause, as an example. She's 34 years old. Why is she getting the same recommendations as a 54 year old who's had four children and never had a hysterectomy? Like, this is the stuff that's happening. And so just like when my girls were little, the American girls had the doll just like you doll, this is how we're looking at pre-menopause and menopause. It's just like you. There are some very consistent recommendations that are evidence-based and those include things like sleep, alcohol, exercise, and so forth. But then there are other things like nutrition that really and truly we need to look at your culture of origin, right? We need to look at your activity level. So, that's what we're building. The product is out there in flight in its initial version. And I'm going to tell every single woman, you know, of course, we'd love to download the app. We want to be supported. It's not as pretty as it's going to be, but I have a friend who has an app-based company, Mary, and they are four years in and they're just now bringing on customers. As a femaleled founder, less than two and a half% of women led pitches to VCs get funded. Women raise more money, but our companies are 68% more profitable. I said, "We're going to put the app out there at a discount, $29 a year. We know it's going to be ugly, but we're gonna get feedback. We're going to refine it, and that's what we're doing."

Mary Killelea: That's amazing. So, how does the data get input into the system?

Susan Sly: I love that question. So, when a subscriber comes onto our platform, she is anonymous. We actually don't know who she is because Apple doesn't know your email could be ABC123 at Hotmail for example. We don't know who you are and you can't put a picture in the app. We don't allow it. So you have a carousel of different avatars you can choose from. You choose a username. We always suggest you don't use your actual name. So just choose whatever you want. Then we now know you have the ability to share how you're feeling. We have a symptom tracker, but again we don't know who you are, which is the thing that was really important to me. Really and that poses its challenges because some of our competitors want to know your name, all of your medical information, your exact date of birth. We only ask for your month and year. And you know I'm not going to give my information to a platform especially medical information when they physically know who I am right so that's how we begin the journey we are in the process of integrating with Aura Ring Fitbit Garmin all of the wearables right now we have Apple watch and so if you do choose to connect a wearable we also get what we call a resilience score which is pulling from different biometric feedbacks So, I'll give you a real world example. So, I've been going through a few things in my personal life. As I said, one of my girlfriends has 30 months to live. I'm going through a move. I'm renovating a house. I'm building a company. I mean, the list goes on and on. And my resilience score was 76 yesterday. And for me, that's, you know, normally I'm in the high 80s. But because of that score, I know that today I didn't go for an interval run. I got on the elliptical. I took it easy. I did weight training. I will go to bed early tonight. And that's just one of many examples of how the data is there, but it's anonymized and you're still able to get precision recommendations.

Mary Killelea: Okay. Oh gosh, there's just so much I want to talk to you about. So, let's back up and because you're in a room with these women who are some of the brightest minds around talking about AI, what words of encouragement or opportunities do you see for other women who want to step into the arena of AI and where they can build their careers? From you know not having a ton of skills to being really skilled and it seems like seamless integration.

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Susan Sly: Yeah, AI is shifting so quickly. You know and the first thing I'm going to say step one is educate yourself. AI is not AI is a buzzword that really within AI we liked it to you know let's use the pi analogy. So computer vision where I came out of is one form of AI and someone I was at a like a tech meetup and someone was like explain computer vision and so for those of you who don't know computer vision is when you're taking security cameras and the AI essentially is looking through the security camera and doing what we call motion interpretation. So what is a human, a machine, you know, whatever an airplane is doing and 247. So those are big data payloads. It is a lot of complexity, a lot of elegance, and a lot of use cases to keep humans safe even though that's just one form of AI. Then a couple years ago everyone started talking about generative AI. So what that is is when you put your known type or your voice or something goes into the AI mostly a machine learning algorithm and then it has an output. It could be more text. It could be a voice like you know your Siri or Alexa. It could also be an image or it could be a video like with Sora. That's another form. Now everyone's talking about agentic AI. So an AI agent performs a simple task that is a repetitive task but eventually you train that AI agent so it can have its own logic. And to give an example because I love when I do talks is to do a talk just like this on how what are these different types of AI when we think about autonomous vehicles. So I'm based in Phoenix and Waymo is allowed to go to the airport and pick up people and it was so very startling the first time I pulled up next to a Waymo and I looked over and there's no one in that passenger seat. So there's a lot of AI agents working in tandem to interpret what is going on for that vehicle. There's an example of agentic AI. So we look at all these different forms of AI and there are others and the first thing is first is knowing the difference and number two is deciding how you would like to be involved. So there's the ethics component if you come from any kind of policy. Then there's the sales and marketing side. Then there is the business development side which is you know where you're looking at how do we implement AI and how do we scale it.

Susan Sly: I'm one of the only women who've actually scaled artificial intelligence in the United States. And so there's a seat for everyone at the table and I didn't pivot my career until I was 45.

Mary Killelea: So, someone who's listening, and this isn't something I usually talk about on the podcast, but since you're here, I have to pick your brain for a woman out there who has an idea for an AI app or a product that you know based on AI and what what should she have as far as like a pitch and starting to get funding and like taking her plan from an idea in her you know room to actually and I know this is a loaded question but at a high level like what core advice do you have for someone like that?

Susan Sly: I think it's a really good question because there's a lot of misinformation and confusion out there and I've had girlfriends who've gone down that path. One, it is going to cost you more than you actually think it is. Number two, coming out of MIT, there's a there, you know, there's a concept there called MMP, a minimum marketable product, which is a product that your minimum product that people will pay for. So unlike a beta version or an MVP, this is something someone will pay you whatever that number is and in exchange for what you built. The third thing is off-the-shelf tooling. So we now see AI platforms that can be customized to be part of the tech stack and even I would say you know 3 four years ago people had to build their own AI now even as an angel investor I'm not deploying capital this year because I'm investing in my own company but the you know even Mary seeing companies now that can get to market faster because of the great off-the-shelf tools right And so to you know the a lot of people will spend millions and millions of dollars to be able to get a product out to the market. We made a decision that we were not going to do a free version. Every VC I have spoken to has said that is a genius idea because the churn is so high especially in apps. So still you know you're going to spend a lot of money. The other thing I would say is my , you know, two really big pieces of advice. One, put together a group of advisors. I am an adviser on two companies that have experience because what's going to happen, let's say you're a nutritionist and you're like, "Oh, I want to do this." You're going to talk to different dev shops and they're going to quote you a price and you'll think, "Oh, you know, for 250,000 I'll get this thing out in the market." then you do not have an architecture diagram. You don't know there's broken code, there's all this tech debt. Then you go to another dev shop and then you spend another 250,000 and you're still not out in the market. And the list goes on and on and on. So surrounding yourself with people who've actually done it before and who can ask the questions I think is key. Make them advisers. You may give away some equity to do that. And then the second thing is look at your partners whether it's Microsoft for startups, Amazon for startups, Google for startups, they all have startup programs and your cloud costs are going to soar very quickly even when you're building and you don't want to be in that place where you don't even have a product and you're down $3 million and and that happens all the time. So yeah,

Mary Killelea: That's just so much gold in there. Alright, let's talk about networking. Before I guess before I talk about networking, I want to back up because you've been in rooms that have been dominated by men. Just for the sheer reality of, you know, women in the space that you're in. Yeah. How have you gone in with such confidence? And how when the confidence seems to be dwindling, do you pump it back up?

Susan Sly: Yeah. Yeah. And we're living in a very interesting time. I don't know if it was wired or I can't remember. That recently an article came out about the tech bros and that now that we DEI is being abolished and it's suddenly permission to these guys who were portraying themselves as so sensitive are now like wakeboarding with no shirt on and like going hunting and doing all this crap that they never show they were probably doing but they just never were flexing about it. So we're living in a very interesting time to be a woman. I have personally observed that the conversations are changing and I'll just be very candid to the women listening, you're going to have to prove yourself in a lot of the rooms. So for me, I was raised by a single dad. So I do have an advantage. I was raised more like we would have said when we were little tomboy, right? So it was football on Sundays. it was church, it was football, it was politics, it was you know growing up with Walter Kronhite, we watched the news every night, my dad and I, and he was an engineer. So for me, I'm very comfortable with men. You know, if I'm on a Zoom and I see you've got like the Eagles in the background or some whatever it is, we're going to have a conversation. I know what's going on and I can very much get to that point where there's some form of common ground much like it would be with a couple of guys. And I don't care if anyone wants to criticize me. I mean, everyone's got an opinion, but it's just who I am. It's not who I'm trying to be. And I want to pause with this statement because girls listen, just be who you are, right? It's just who I am. I was not raised with dolls and, you know, princess parties and things. I wish, God willing, I was, but you know, my mom was not part of my life. So, that's how I was raised. And so,

Susan Sly: I'm very comfortable talking about a lot of those things that guys would normally talk about. Going into a room where I remember once I was going into a room, it was myself, all guys, and there were all these servers on a conference table, and it's like, okay, you've got to know your stuff. I had completely memorized the Nvidia GPU catalog for edge.I started to get very clear on what edge is a form for as people don't know it's when you process data at the source. So like in a hospital example there's a lot of edge servers because they're processing all this data. It's cheaper than sending data to the cloud, processing it and bringing it back down. So I knew the edge servers, edge architecture. I started to learn, you know what were the questions I needed to ask. And I think for me that you know my advice would be to any woman if that is the case. I see a lot of women out there right now because of federal funding for women led startups and women's initiatives and women are you know on social media. They're, you know, they're complaining and girls, you know what? You can complain about things if you feel you can make a change. But, you know, just complaining on social media isn't going to do it. You know, reach out to your congressperson, your senator, whoever it is. But at the end of the day, you're going to have to prove yourself. And I think I was saying, you know, you had to be 30% better. I think in this current environment, you've got to be 90% better and that's what it's going to take. I know when I go to pitch a VC especially when you've got a product that's for menopause the most of the people if they're men they're never going to go through menopause they're not going to get the problem statement so I've had to become better pitching like all of those things and you can say Mary it sucks and it does but it is what it is so we just have to adapt to that terrain

Mary Killelea: yeah I know I'm kind of like that you cannot spend time worrying about something you can't control. You just have to do what's in your control. And if that's doing the extra work, you do the extra work. Let's talk about networking. How have you been able to surround yourself with support throughout your career and any tips for other women in building their supportive network?

Susan Sly: Networking is huge and you know this, right? Like you know, it's all about who you know, but how do you end up knowing who you know? What most people would be surprised to know if you, you know, look at my LinkedIn or Instagram or any of the social media platforms is I'm a natural introvert and it is a lot of effort for me to network. I find cocktail parties exhausting, but I go right. To give you an example, this past week, Tuesday night, I was invited to by JP Morgan and shouted out to them for this gathering they had in Scottsdale to bring together like seven founders and ask our opinions and things like that and it was a great event and it was lovely. Yesterday morning I was so tired like it's a lot and people say Susan, you know you could speak in front of 20,000 people or you can have a YouTube channel you could do shows like this. Yes, but I know as a natural introvert that I have to be a situational extrovert in order to do it. So, I love podcasts because I love to be able to have a conversation like you and I could be having a cocktail. We could be having a coffee. We could be having lunch and sitting down. When I'm at an event and I'm physically networking, I'm like, "Oh." And I have the Leo policy last in the first step. That being said, the reason I shared that is even on my show, I have a lot of people who come on, even men who've, you know, had exits and successful, you know, rounds and so forth, who are natural introverts. And we talk about it a lot because most people make the incorrect assumption that someone is an extrovert. And here's the thing, Mary, you know you're an extrovert when you leave that cocktail party and you're energized. You know you're an introvert when you leave that party and you're like I just need to sit and watch friends for like you know two hours. So the networking piece knows your strengths and so one of my strengths is really I do genuinely care about people and I am very interested and curious about people. So I make myself go to networking events. I network on LinkedIn. Usually every week I have my calendarly one of the events is a 15minute and people will reach out to me on LinkedIn and hey you know as long as they're not selling me something you know can we meet and I I will do you know one of or two of those a week just to meet people. I go to a lot of networking events and I speak at events and when I speak at events, I always make sure that I attend at least one of the networking events to get to know people and as part of that strategy, you know, that's where investors have come from in my company. That's where you know, some amazing opportunities and I would say to anyone listening is just to be really clear. U going into an event with what can I get? I'll tell a quick story. So, I was asked to speak at an event called AI Salon, which is cool. And there are a lot of young founders there and they know I'm an angel investor. So, they've looked at my LinkedIn and stuff and they come up to me not like, "Oh, something I learned from your talk or I have a question about this." It's like, "Oh, I have a startup and we're raising $2 million and" and I'm like, "That's not networking. That's vomiting all over someone. Networking is when you think about what I can offer this person in value without keeping score, right?

Mary Killelea: 100% agree. What I love about you, is that you're the face of the company and you represent the company so well because you can speak to it as a person who would be using it. I think I'm trying to lead you down a path about talking about personal branding and how important it is for companies to realize that people don't want to connect so much with the title of the brand. They want to connect with leaders. So, what have you done around building your personal brand? I know you talk about, you know, some I guess I assume you're being very intentional because you're very successful at it. What advice do you have for women and how important is personal brand building?

Susan Sly: Sure. Let's step back because you know you and I will remember life before social media. You're right. Right. So I want to talk about the celebrity founder and this is one of my favorite topics because when people start to think about it they're like oh okay so let's think about Apple for a minute right so Steve Jobs was that and it doesn't matter. I'm going to name a few examples. It doesn't matter how people feel about them. We're just using them. If I was teaching a university class, these would be case studies. So, Steve Jobs had his look, right? His turtleneck, you know, and he had his quirks about him, but he was known to have these fits and things, but this became legend. He was like the OG celebrity influencer in that tech space. Bill Gates was never the same kind of persona in terms of being influential. And again, this was all legend. This was all old school interviews on 60 Minutes and things like that. So then we get into fast forward time to this group of people in you know technology who are celebrity founders. And the thing I want everyone to know if you are taking notes is that a celebrity founder can make or break a company and if it is done well people will be very forgiving. So I'm going to use a very contentious name right now because why not? The thing I love about your show is and whenever I'm on a show, what you see is what you get. This is the conversation I would have had with you at 3:50 in the morning when I woke up, Mary. So it's the same action.

Mary Killelea: I love that

Susan Sly: And I know you do. I know you appreciate that. So, let's look at Elon Musk. So Elon is this, you know, this persona and prior to what's going on currently with the the stuff with Tesla, he was this person that he was idolized especially by all these young men and they would go and buy a Tesla and they would, you know, everyone loved their Tesla and he was this, you know, demigod of of a persona and a brand. So even when Tesla almost went bankrupt, he had so many orders for Teslas because it became this cult culture, right? And there's another example, Zuckerberg is another example. Bezos is another example like these people who are iconic around their brands. And outside of technology, I'll use Sarah Blakeley. Everyone Sarah was like one of us, right? She had her cellulite. She's pouring herself into her Spanx and I had her husband Jesse Sler on my show and like they're just real people. So Sarah was another one. So the question is when you look at some of these big brands, can you have a successful brand without a brand icon, without that person who is the face of the brand? I would say it gets you so far, but the biggest brands in the world have some kind of person at the helm who is that spokesperson and isn't easy because you're also going to take the arrows. And so, what I found for myself is, I'm willing to be vulnerable. I've even spoken on Instagram about issues I've had with my husband. I, you know, I don't want to be that person who's always trying to be perfect, but I'd rather, as Oprah said, I'd rather be respected than liked. I would also, you know, just rather just put everything out there and not care at the risk of knowing that some investors, you know, might not, you know, think that's that's great. But the number one value in our company is trust. And how are you going to trust someone who's being inauthentic? So, guess what, girls? Yes, you need to brand yourself. There's no question.

Mary Killelea: What does to be bolder mean to you?

Susan Sly: I just think it's having the courage to speak your truth. And you know, we went through a culture and Cheryl Samberg started with Let's Lean In and then we went to this impostor syndrome. Girls, it's enough is enough is enough. Like stop caring. You know, we're 8 billion people in the world. You'll find your people. I just don't care anymore. like I'm just 52 years old. I'm just going to be who I am. And I'm on a path. I still do personal growth. I read four books a month. I listen to podcasts every morning. You know, as I said, I do all the stuff. I don't intend to be the same iteration of me a year from now. but I'm bold enough to just speak my truth and really just not Marry care what anyone thinks.

Mary Killelea: That made me curious. What are your podcasts that you're listening to and some of your favorite books?

Susan Sly: Oh, well, I listen to a lot of Lewis House especially when he has foundered on because Lewis has his personal coach Chris Lee. I know Chris, he's an amazing human. Lewis asks questions that are different than the standard like you know how did you get into entrepreneurship and you know that kind of thing and it's like more like let's talk and which is what I do on my show run real entrepreneurship like let's get to the heart of it the consciousness of it like did you ever feel like you want to quit did you ever get depressed you know all of that stuff so I really love his interview style and it's it's evolved I when I'm in you sort of nerdy mode. I'll listen to acquired is another one that I really enjoy because I want to listen to the business tactics for sure.

Susan Sly: Books. I am reading so many books at one time. So Gabby Bernstein self-help. She and I have some people we know in common and her new book, her last book, was really vulnerable when she talks about being sexually abused. She's always been vulnerable about her journeys. So this one is really a very focused type of therapy. So I love that. I'm audio reading Louiswis's new book, Make Money Easy. It also depends on how much time I have. It's there's a book I'm audio reading about populating Mars and how like the you know what it's physically going to take from an engineering standpoint to do that because Elon is working very aggressively on that and I actually know people who are working on title rights to land in Mars and things I mean crazy stuff and so that those those are kind of what I'm you know reading and I do read fiction Mary

Mary Killelea: As a founder, when you're hiring someone, do you look at where they went to school and what boxes they've checked off or is there something more intrinsic that you're looking at from them?

Susan Sly: Oh, this process has grown for me because I used to, you know, my husband would always say my biggest strength is I believe in people. My greatest weakness is I believe in people. You know, and so we have a process now where everyone gets a 30-day contract and you have to go through three interviews. So the first interview, if we're hiring engineers, is going to be a technical interview. Then you're going to go through a cultural interview. It's always three people interviewing and in the technical interview you have two tech people and one non-technical. the cultural, you have two non-technical, one technical, and then there's a third final interview. Then you get a 30-day trial, and you jump right in. I don't care if you went to Stanford, if you went to MIT, or you have a certificate from Google. That doesn't tell me anything about your technical skills. It really doesn't. I've had all of those. I've had PhDs. I've had, you know, it doesn't tell me anything because at the end of the day, my philosophy is anyone can learn a skill, but I can't teach them integrity. And so, we only have two core values, trust and wow. And if you can't deliver trust and wow in 30 days, you're out. So, you know, people, some of the partners we have are like, where's Bob? I'm just making that name up. I'm like, oh no, Bob's gone. Didn't pass the 30-day. Like, you know, love Bob. But it's, you know, it did. And candidly from a consciousness perspective, Mary, it doesn't serve the person to be in an environment where they are not going to get to grow and it doesn't serve the company. And one of the best things I have ever heard and learned is that the consciousness of a company is directly related to the consciousness of the CEO. So even when I'm having 50 wall kicking moments and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, really? I show up in the dev standup. I show up in, you know, I'm like, "Icebreaker. I've got a smile on my face. Let's go." But I also with our team that has come through those 30 days, I tell them everything. They know where we're at with fundraising. They know what's going on in my personal life. They know everything. And I'm like, "If you have equity in this company, you're now a co-owner of the company and we're in it together." And I expect for you to be transparent. If you've got a whole bunch of crap happening in your life, tell me. We'll figure it out together. But that's how I operate the c company which is very different and unexpected but that's what we do.

Mary Killelea: That's really refreshing cuz I can tell you you get into some of these corporations and the leadership is so many ladders above you that you know people are terrified when they come in the room versus sharing what the problems are where they matter and where they're getting done. It's such a disconnect sometimes I see. How, as a leader, what do you think? What advice do you have for women leaders out there to become better leaders?

Susan Sly: So I have a way I work on myself is I look at my life in chapters because think about Mary, think about the last sort of epic book you read or the last epic movie you watched. Right. So think what's one that comes to mind for you?

Mary Killelea: Brene Brown Dare to Lead.

Susan Sly: Right. Exactly. Or think about a fiction book. Right. or a fiction movie,

Mary Killelea: Girl on a Train.

Susan Sly: Yeah, exactly. Or I'll use this one because it's just top of mind. I was telling my sister-in-law she hadn't seen The Book Club, right, with Candaceburg. It's so funny, right? Just darling. And so if we think about a fiction book or a movie and how each chapter moves so quickly and something different, if I think about my life as a leader in chapters, then I do not get as stressed and concerned because I get to write the next chapter. So the chapter we're in, it's like, oh, okay, this is the chapter, but what's going to come in the next chapter? Because just like a fiction book, I'm setting up my next chapter, whatever that is. And girls, some chapters are shorter, some are longer. So that's the first thing I do, number one. Number two is I believe I control my own destiny. And so when we look at what I've studied I grew up in a Christian, Buddhist, Jewish household. I've also studied Cabala. So when we look at things and we're saying our goals, Mary, like, oh, I want to make more money or I want to attract my perfect partner or whatever it is, then we're essentially asking our creator to expand our vessel. If you've ever been pregnant and you've had pains from growing that child in your body, you stretched out your skin, right? Like every pregnancy I gained 47 pounds. No matter how clean I ate, I was like, "What?" But you stretched until it was so painful and you know you produced this baby. And it's the same thing when we're saying to our creator, hey, you know, I want my vessel to expand, which is what I did at the beginning of this year. And oh my gosh, I've had a lot of wall kicking moments, but the expansiveness that comes from growth.

Susan Sly: So my my piece around it is if we're going to say we want to lead, we have to be prepared for expansiveness, which ultimately our creator wants us to be happy, fulfilled, successful, but it means it it could probably be painful and suddenly your your relationship unravels and suddenly you you know this happened Mel Robbins, she had like a cyber security scam hit and you know lost I can't at least $100,000 like Mary Ruth's Organics, they had something similar happen a million dollars and it's like all of this expansiveness. It was like oh all the things I was holding on to so tight apparently don't matter but I get to write my next chapter. The third thing I will say is it's really really important to decide who you want to be as a leader and look for evidence in reality because if you're trying to have something evidence-based that is you have no you know reference point to Mary you're never going to get it and a little strategy. So let's say someone says I'll use one of mine. So Whitney Wolf Herd was a founder of Bumble. She left her previous startup. There was a lawsuit, you know, toxic, whatever. She goes and starts Bumble. And her first year, what she did is she went all around the country while they were trying to figure out the product. And she would have cocktails and get conversations going. And so that's what I did last year before we launched the product. I had cocktails and conversations in Atlanta, Scottsdale, like you know, all over the place to get the feedback from women. That was, you know, one. And then she starts to build the product and just you know iterative software and it's like okay I'm going to push a feature, get feedback and so on and so forth. And the day she went public, I believe it was Friday, February 13th. And I'm like, who goes public on a Friday the 13th? But she did. I think it was during a Mercury retrograde and you know, all kinds of crazy girls were like, "What?" $7 billion in one day was the valuation she went to. And she never, you know, has been just incredibly thoughtful in how she reinvisioned that platform. And it was a red ocean. there were other dating apps in that space. So I think about what you will have heard for me as a leader. So having that reference point and really thinking how do I model after that person is key. But to anyone who's listening if you are ready for your vessel to be expanded be prepared. You are probably going to have a challenging chapter.

Mary Killelea: How important are systems to success?

Susan Sly: Only as important as your ability to be flexible and not rigid. And I'm sure you have too, Mary, with your background corporately had systems that were so rigid that it, you know, innovation was impossible. And people being expensive was not possible. You know, you and I both h I'm sure have colleagues at these large companies and they're going along rigidly with all these systems and the next thing the whole division is laid off, right? and they're laid off because they weren't innovative enough, but the people are like, "We weren't allowed to innovate." So, I think systems are lovely. You know, I'm grateful there's a system in place that says if you drink too much alcohol, you shouldn't be driving. I think that's fantastic. In building a startup, you have to be nimble with your systems and you have to be willing to try new things. And especially if you've come from a big company at your first startup, some of the systems you had are not going to work in startup life. They just won't. And so you want to ask yourself if your systems are there because you're afraid to take risks or are your systems actually there because you want to have some form of healthy guard rails.

Mary Killelea: Okay. Last question. What would you tell your younger self?

Susan Sly: I don't swear, but if I did, it would be like stop giving so many fs. Honestly, Mel Robbins again, you know, her new book is called Let Them. And I think Mary, you know, there are a lot of moments where I just really cared too much about what people thought. And there is a saying that I've said for many years, which is on average only four people cry at any funeral. And if you're not going to cry at my funeral, you don't earn an opinion about my life. And so I wish Mel had written the book earlier and I wish I had read it earlier. Time machine. It would let them be the first one and the second one is, you know, looking back even as an investor looking at trusting my gut and you know to the point where had I trusted my gut I'll just tell a super quick story. I had a financial adviser once and I want to invest in the Facebook IPO and he talked me out of it and I could just see what it could be and he's like it's never going to make any money because it's a free platform. Now you and I might not be having this conversation. So the creator, God, had a bigger plan for me. I wasn't supposed to make millions of dollars from the Facebook IPO, but you know, it's things like that, not trusting myself and caring too much about what people thought. Yeah,

Mary Killelea: That is so amazing. Okay, so where can people get in touch with you, learn more about your company, and for the younger ones, what should they be helping their moms or other women in their lives, you know, go get this app?

Susan Sly: Sure. Thank you. New research shows that women as young as 30 are going into pre-menopause. 30. Wow. And the symptoms start Mary neurologically. And if you and I both looked back. So what I mean by that is things like anxiety, depression that doesn't make sense, worry, the you know brain fatigue, that kind of thing. Now research is showing that those can actually be related to parmenopause. So, initially we thought our app was more for women 40 plus and now we're saying anyone 30 plus is definitely going to benefit and so they can just go into the app store, they can download it. We'll be in the Play Store very shortly. And we need more beta testers. And yes, it is $3.99 a month or $29 for the year. We need your help, girls, because this is a femalefounded, femalefunded company, and we need more subscribers to help to shape the future of women's health. So, you can go to ww.thepaw.ai and if you want to find out more about me, you can go to susansly.com. But Mary, I love what you're doing and I'm so grateful that you and women like us are out there in the world sharing our wisdom, sharing our network with other women and helping women grow and succeed.

Mary Killelea: Thank you so much. It's been awesome talking with you.

Susan Sly: Thank you

Mary Killelea: I really enjoyed it.

Mary Killelea: Thanks for listening to the episode today. It was really fun chatting with my guest. If you liked our show, please like it and share it with your friends. If you want to learn what we're up to, please go check out our website at 2bolder.com. That's the number 2 littlebBolder.com.